Executive education is now seen as the biggest opportunity for many business schools. Yet technological change and the rising number of providers offering alternatives to traditional institutions have made it one of the most challenging and competitive sectors for providers in which to achieve growth.
The expansion in the market for short programmes teaching practical skills in bite-sized courses is driven by the need for employees to retrain to be productive in a digital age. The international university consortium for executive education (Unicon), which represents more than 100 business schools offering this kind of teaching, suggests the total market is worth about $2bn and has grown by 20 per cent over the past five years.
A survey by the Chartered Association of Business Schools of UK-based deans and senior managers in late 2018 found that executive education programmes were seen as second only to new online degree courses as a source of revenue growth over the next decade.